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Skill shapes: A new way to talk about workforce needs

Strada Institute for the Future of Work: Understanding local workforce needs
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A new vocabulary is emerging in an increasingly complex labor market, according to the Strada Institute for the Future of Work. One that will make it easier, and quicker, to close the gap between the skills employers want and workers have or need to acquire.

Michelle Weise, Strada Institute for the Future of Work Chief Innovation Officer (Photo: Strada)

“As you think about the future of work, everyone wants to know how to best prepare for it,” says the institute’s Chief Innovation Officer Michelle Weise. “Labor markets are local, but it’s hard to figure out how you actually understand the local economy in a more precise way. So, this is an attempt to answer that.”

The New Geography of Skills, released Dec. 10 by the Strada Institute for the Future of Work and Emsi, introduces a relatively new concept to a wider audience — the skill shape. According to the report, “a skill shape refers to the unique skill demands associated with a given career field, region, or individual.”

“When people talk about a skills gap, there is no broad general skills gap,” says Weise. “It’s actually dependent on the region that you’re looking at. Sometimes there are actually surpluses of skills for certain areas. So this gives us that really granular look at any kind of role in any of region.”

The skill shape is determined by analyzing real-time job postings and professional profiles. Ultimately, it ends up being a more specific way to describe the skills a worker needs to fill a specific open job. For example, the skill shape of a cybersecurity job in one town might look entirely different than a cybersecurity job in another. It all depends on what the employer needs a worker to do in that particular job, in that particular business, in that particular community.

Yustina Saleh, Emsi SVP of Analytics (Photo: Strada)

“There is no such thing as a cybersecurity occupation code or a data scientist occupation code. When we look at the data, it actually could be so many things,” explains Yustina Saleh, senior vice president of analytics for Emsi, a Strada affiliate company. “It’s the skills in a job posting rather than a title.”

“Sometimes it will be a marketing person with very, very strong math skills. Sometimes it is a software engineer with some machine learning skills. The approach allows us to just go beyond these very, very static artifacts,” adds Saleh.

Creating a deeper talent pool

Weise says the concept of the skill shape came out a conversation with state leaders. “We were talking with 25 chiefs of staff for governors of states, and at one point, a couple of them said, ‘We get that you’re trying to move towards a skills-based hiring environment, and we support that. One of the challenges we face is that it’s very hard to get employers to let go of degree requirements when they are looking at talent pools and opening up their talent pipeline.'”

While the idea is still in its pioneering stage, it is already being put to use by some groups trying to close the skills gap between employers and employees in certain regions. The Business-Higher Education Forum is using skill shapes to forge partnerships between educators and economic development agencies. United Healthcare is using the concept to develop its worker pipeline. And Southern New Hampshire University and Western Governors University are using it refine its career-pathway curricula.

The goal of a common language

Strada’s goal with the report is to show the potentials of using skill shapes when developing a nimble workforce able to shift as demand for certain skills shift.

The report argues that using skill shapes could:

  • Help educators and industry groups identify opportunities to upskill and reskill employees in line with workforce demands and talent gaps.
  • Inform civic leaders as to how to grow their local economies.
  • Help employers better understand their regional talent supplies.

“Ultimately, we hope that this report illustrates how we start building a common
language among all stakeholders in this new learning and earning ecosystem,” says Strada.

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Dana Beth Ardi

Executive Committee

Dana Beth Ardi, PhD, Executive Committee, is a thought leader and expert in the fields of executive search, talent management, organizational design, assessment, leadership and coaching. As an innovator in the human capital movement, Ardi creates enhanced value in companies by matching the most sought after talent with the best opportunities. Ardi coaches boards and investors on the art and science of building high caliber management teams. She provides them with the necessary skills to seek out and attract top-level management, to design the ideal organizational architectures and to deploy people against strategy. Ardi unearths the way a business works and the most effective way for people to work in them.

Ardi is an experienced business executive and senior consultant who leverages business organizational transformation through talent strategies. She uses her knowledge and experience to develop talent strategies to enhance revenue and profit contributions. She has a deep expertise in change management and organizational effectiveness and has designed and built high performance cultures. Ardi has significant experience in mergers, acquisitions, divestitures, IPO’s and turnarounds.

Ardi is an expert on the multi-generational workforce. She understands the four intersecting generations of workers coming together in contemporary companies, each with their own mindsets, leadership and communications styles, values and motivations. Ardi is sought after to assist companies manage and thrive by bringing the generations together. Her book, Fall of the Alphas: How Beta Leaders Win Through Connection, Collaboration and Influence, will be published by St. Martin’s Press. The book reflects Ardi’s deep expertise in understanding organizations and our changing society. It focuses on building a winning culture, how companies must grow and evolve, and how talent influences and shapes communities of work. This is what she has coined “Corporate Anthropology.” It is a playbook on how modern companies must meet challenges – culturally, globally, digitally, across genders and generations.

Ardi is currently the Managing Director and Founder of Corporate Anthropology Advisors, LLC, a consulting company that provides human capital advisory and innovative solutions to companies building value through people. Corporate Anthropology works with organizations, their cultures, the way they grow and develop, and the people who are responsible for forming their communities of work.

Prior to her position at Corporate Anthropology Advisors, Ardi served as a Partner/Managing Director at the private equity firms CCMP Capital and JPMorgan Partners. She was a partner at Flatiron Partners, a venture capital firm working with early state companies where she pioneered the human capital role within an investment portfolio.

Ardi holds a BS from the State University of New York at Buffalo as well as a Masters degree and PhD from Boston College. She started her career as professor at the Graduate Center at Fordham University in New York.